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The role of language and the language of role in institutional decision making

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Hugh Mehan
Hugh Mehan
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego
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Abstract

The relationship between linguistic processes, cognitive activities, and social structures is explored by examining the decision making of committees of educators as they decide to place students into special education programs or retain them in regular classrooms. Often, different committee members enter committee meetings with different views of the student's case and its disposition, e.g., classroom teachers and parents provide accounts of the student's performance that compete with the view of the psychologist or district representative. Yet by the meeting's end, the version of the student's case provided by the psychologist or the district representative prevails.

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Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , June 1983 , pp. 187 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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